The Tampere Linguistics Forum, hosted by the School of Language, Translation and Literary Studies of the University of Tampere, aims to bring together researchers investigating particular areas of linguistics. The inaugural Forum is scheduled for August 23, 2013, and its topic is ‘Complementation’.

Complementation has been the object of many a study during the past four or five decades and there is still much left unexplored. Even the definition of ‘complementation’ and what a ‘complement’ is varies depending on the framework one is working with. For example, Quirk et al. (1985) define complementation as ‘the function of a part of a phrase or clause which follows a word, and completes the specification of a meaning relationship which that word implies.’ Biber et al. (1999) state that ‘[c]omplement clauses are a type of dependent clause used to complete the meaning relationship of an associated verb or adjective in a higher clause.’ What is common to all interpretations of ‘complementation’ is the idea that the complement completes the linguistic manifestation of some abstract unit of meaning.